Just another blog with nothing really to say except to express myself to no-one in particular with no particular reason other than other people are doing it. If you are reading this, you may have to tollerate posts with good recipes, great guitar, and video game references all at once. I hope that you are not too put off.

Wednesday, September 07, 2011

Deuce Sex

I haven't blogged in way too long and it's about time I changed that. Honestly, I think I may have been spending far too much of my personal time playing games, which is not a normal thing for me. Normal to play games, but it is usually in some form of moderation. However, Deus Ex is just too crazy good for me. It does have flaws and in a lot of ways it is lacking compared to the original, in other ways it outshines it, but unlike the second Deus Ex, this one caters to the way I like to play games in the same way that the original did.

It's a very special kind of game that lets me feel and put the effort into being a stealth computer hacking sniper ninja. The original is one of the only games that ever captured that feel for me, it was like Thief, only if I got caught I could whip out my rocket launcher and play Bad JC if I hadn't saved in 6 hours and didn't feel like giving up that chunk of my life to fixing a dumb mistake. Deus Ex: Human Revolution has a lot of this same feel, and a really well developed structure and beautiful environments. For all its flaws, I do consider it a modern classic, and it is good enough to overshadow the orignal, which, for all ITS flaws in some ways is a far supperior game. Examples include the ending, where your actions in the game moved the plot forward. Yahtzee of Zero Punctuation fame feels that the new game is just find the fastest way to the end and then go back and loot all the other routes, but then, I could have sworn he said he played the original, which was the exact same game. It's one of my favorite games of all times, but the level structure is not inferior, and in many ways is very superior, though, most of his other criticisms are dead on acurate.

The "End game choice" machine is stupid and makes the "watch all the different endings" achievement even more absurd.

One of my biggest complaints about the game is that there are achievements for pacifist playthroughs and no alarm playthroughs... but there is no counter anywhere in the game where you can see if you were responsible for someones death enough to discount the one or if that alarm that was running whenever and for whatever reason is enough to disqualify the other.. it's a whole game and not knowing is a major commitment to a decision. And on top of that, for the pacifist achievement.. the Tranquilizer rifle can KILL people on ACCIDENT... with something like a headshot which is designed to knock people out faster and quieter... is the only way to do the silent KO to use the incredibly not silent takedowns that are only available from point blank range? It's actually kind of inspiring, even though it was frustrating to believe halfway through my second playthrough of the game that I had to start over and waste all that effort on the ground that since I liked headshots with the tranq gun that I had more than likely killed with it before. It makes me want to do a 100% lethal run of the game using only non lethal weapons to kill.

But seriously, from what people are saying about that achievement it sounds like you become entirely responsible for the lives of your enemies.. if you knock them out and they fall into electrified water that you couldn't save them from, well, there it goes... if you knock them out and leave them in a room that blows up, goodbye achievement... if you arive at a level and they lock themselves in a room alone and don't let you in to save them and drink the punch just to spite you... well, you get the picture. I'm not just responsible for not killing them, but making sure that their unconscious bodies are undamaged for the rest of the game, it feels like.

Anywho. I've ranted long enough. I could go on, but I don't think anyone would be interested. I've already played the game for 85 hours, after I finish beating it this time, I am going to take a break. Hopefully it will be nice and cool outside by then.